elf free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you
will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you
step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can
free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of
their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but
do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of
his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as
a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their
three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes
to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the
Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were
loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case
with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive
example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute
the _thing_ he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat.
The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.

In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it.
The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because
the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the
freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished
to have votes and _not_ to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic
side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton
or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance
and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But
since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been
weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that
proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried
to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The
Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but
(what was more important) the system he would _not_ rebel against, the
system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not
entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be
really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really
gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation
implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist
doubts not only the institution